At home in La Grange.

A Town Awakens To Find Itself Trendy

April 09, 1994|By Mary Umberger, Tribune Staff Writer.

Hallmarks of Western Civilization, Part I: It may be going too far to call the west suburban village of La Grange "trendy," but visitors should note that at one service station/convenience store there, you can pick up not only the usual gallon of milk and a newspaper, but also . . . cappuccino and caffe latte.

Though the business, known as the General Store, probably is the most unlikely location in town for it, La Grange offers other venues where you can sip these flavors of the '90s while munching on a scone and listening to live folk music. Elsewhere, you can get your fingernails "designed." Or maybe pick up some cognac pumpkin cheesecake for later.

This is La Grange? Good old La Grange, the town known primarily for its annual Pet Parade, whose residents affectionately (and repeatedly) describe it as "stable" and "sleepy"?

It is. If La Grange is, indeed, sleepy, it appears to be on the verge of awaking from a nap that began in the 1970s, a nap that long has been the source of annoyance to the town's business sector. If business is not booming here, it is at least breaking into a hum as it capitalizes on the town's recently restored "vintage" streetscape and the support of half a dozen civic programs intended to bring dollars, shoppers and services to the somnolent downtown.

Businesses need customers, and real estate brokers are doing their best to supply them. Agents exultantly report that, this spring, it's all they can do to keep up with sales of houses.

Granted, "sleepy" is a relative term, and La Grange is certainly that in terms of crime and nightlife. But the village has some amenities that city dwellers have largely kissed goodbye: high-performing schools; clean, leafy streets; and inexpensive recreation, to name three. Marie and Bob Anderson moved from Chicago's North Side to La Grange about a year and a half ago, bringing with them two young children and extensive plans for gutting and rehabbing a large frame two-flat that's a short walk from the handsome Stone Avenue Metra station. It's a street of substantial homes, delicately painted Victorians and a couple of jaw-dropping manses.

"We didn't know anybody here," Marie explained. "We looked a good five years. We looked all over. We checked out Berwyn, Riverside, the North Shore and finally narrowed it down to here."

Seated in the airy kitchen that the Andersons carved out of what were once four cramped rooms, she uttered the single word on the lips of most young parents who have left Chicago: schools.

"We wanted them to be able to walk to school," she said of her boys, 6 1/2 and 4. Another baby is due in September.

She says the rehab to turn the house back into a single-family home went comparatively smoothly, and they have little in the way of complaint regarding the town, the school or their neighbors. She said a typical Saturday might find the kids taking an art class offered by the park district or playing soccer at the Rich Port YMCA. They bike with their kids to the bakery.

Complaints? Anderson pauses, and a vestige of the former North Sider manifests itself. "I don't like the lack of good restaurants," she offers.

Not so, says Village Manager Marlies Perthel, who, as official booster of town business, clicks off a list of her local favorites, which include a white-tablecloth-and-fresh-flowers affair and a newish Tex-Mex place. She's beaming: Tex-Mex in La Grange.

"It's actually becoming kind of a restaurant town," she says, citing the demand created by the 2,500 people who pass through the business district daily because of the two Metra stations.

Matters of culinary taste aside, she's more than happy to hear of newcomers such as the Andersons. "We're seeing a lot of younger families again," Perthel said. "They're buying Victorian homes that are being sensitively restored. There's a tremendous amount of activity in remodeling."

Broker Janet Lucas, who heads the La Grange office of Prudential Preferred Properties, confirms that business is brisk; buyers in the $250,000-to-$350,000 range are not unusual. Last year in her office's general area (which also includes Western Springs, La Grange Park and Countryside) the average sales price was $197,000. She sees some activity in tear-downs; there is little vacant land for subdivisions. A couple of developers are selling condominiums.

It all began in the 1830s, when the Vial family built a log cabin nearby, leading a wave of settlement. A farmer from New York, Robert Leitch, arrived in Lyons Township in 1837, eventually buying land that would become part of the Village of La Grange. In 1870 he sold the land and moved to Chicago.

Shortly after, Dwight Cossitt, a Chicago grocery wholesaler, bought 600 acres (some of it formerly Leitch's) in what was then called Kensington Heights. Cossitt saw the potential in the approach of the Burlington & Quincy Railroad, and subdivided the land and built homes in what is now the town's historic district. He renamed the town after his boyhood home in La Grange, Tenn.